Insights and Opinions

Death and Taxes

I really don't know the first thing about politics and very little about economics, but I do know about enablement. My opinion about the tax cuts conversation going on in Washington is this; I believe that the single fastest way for us to get our economy cooking is to give sweeping and significant tax cuts to EVERYONE, rich and poor. The key there is two-fold. First, with more money in our pockets, we're going to spend more, pumping it into the economy creating jobs. Additional jobs will be created because entrepreneurs like me will go off and start new businesses feeling less worried about their income. But most importantly, my experience has been that the number one driver of change is a lack of the one thing that is causing you not to change. In the case of an alcoholic, its money, a place to live, a family to lean on, a friend to get rides from. It's that “enablement” that directly causes that alcoholic to not get sober. Why would he, he's got no incentive too, everything he needs is still being provided for him.

Well, I feel the same about our government. If we keep giving them money, they won't learn to cut back on expenses, why would they. So if we cut taxes, they'll just have less income, bottom line. And that will force our government to change and make the tough decisions to cut programs, reduce overhead and actually start saving money! It's pretty simple and it works. As someone who's been sober for 8 years now I've seen my share of enablement. You want to get out of this financial crisis, stop enabling our government. Unfortunately it's not up to us if we don't want to go to jail for tax evasion, but maybe; just maybe, this little tax cut will show people that everyone wins when we pay the government less money. Think about it.

Jeff Solomon is co-founder and Chief Evangelist at Leads360, a Los Angeles-based developer of sales lead management software. Solomon is also a frequent blogger, contributing his views on the industry and other topics at The Complex System (www.thecomplexsystem.com), where this article was originally posted.